


Anagapesis Venustation

by breath_e



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blind Character, Disturbing Themes, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Permanent Injury, Queerplatonic Relationships, Self Harm, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, violent impulses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-04-03 10:25:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4097458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breath_e/pseuds/breath_e
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AKA: Beautification of fading love.<br/><br/>There are so many stories about blind people and so many about OCD but none about how each of them combine to create an undead corpse walking.<br/><br/>Let's put something into perspective.<br/><br/>Sometimes someone's mind can be their own personal hell but hey. You should be happy things aren't worse.<br/><br/><em>(You're only making it more difficult for yourself.)</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Anagapesis Venustation

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by: [Blind Devotion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_99ySDoC1fw&spfreload=10)
> 
> Heyyyy, credit to Phil Kaye for other inspiration in his poems Suburbia and For Trey! He wrote the line, "The funny thing about dead people is that you do not know they're dead until they're not." I just worked from that.
> 
> \--
> 
> HEy fuckheads guess what i fuckgin rewrote. this shit. check it out, doggs.

Let's put something into perspective.

 

It is 2010 and an eight-year-old little girl is dying to a doctor's greedy knife, stomach bloating, the dreams resting in her intestines dissected out and pinned to the ceiling.

 

They promised she would be capable of walking, they promised she would be able to run as far as her imagination stretched. They promised that instead of crumbling in the confines of plastic sheets, her life would fruit from the joy of capability...   Her large family stands around her, sobbing and managing their final goodbyes.

 

Except for one.

 

Her twin brother who stood in front of them all, like a cherub holding her last breaths in a jar full of fireworks. The girl's twin stayed silent, face stoic and plain. When the girl finally died, resting in the twin's hands, her soul escaped through the organs above her and held a firm grasp onto her brother's hand as she ghosted upward.

 

Imagine having your fingers ripped off (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and release) but all too late to mean anything better than an empty calculator. This has been coming for weeks, months, years. Her life had never been able to produce the fantasy they held close to their hearts and finally her living was as meaningless as a machine no longer able to use. Desolate. Cold. 

 

Another empty engine twitched at her family's feet, coughing and sputtering, smoke rising ever slowly from it, but they kept it underneath their feet. Her twin brother. Every night the machine of a person would mold into a tin man, clinking through the weary smiles of his brothers laughing out, "Hey you're back!" as if he had been gone, personality, the thing that dictates a person. Slipped away. He grasped onto his humanity like a sweaty hand over an open flame, before his twin came clinking off, drifting slowly like a fragile leaf. After all, this has been coming for weeks, months, years.

 

The twin died not two months later from starvation, but he was already dead.

 

///

 

Let's put something into perspective.

 

It is 1961 and two elderly people lay side by side, clutching onto each other at blunt fingertips, dried with the life ticking away, ticking, ticking, ticking. Ticking away. They were so undeniably old.

 

The clock blinked a time that no longer mattered but somehow kept turning with the labored breaths of both- snores from years of coughing on smoke sputtering forth from a ring on their fingers and a plot of land they managed in a field where the same manufactured homes popped up like weeds. 

 

They've watched their world drown around them again and again.

 

They watched the world's body wrinkle and spine crack, when they allowed people to lay out houses like mines, tendrils sweeping the land. They poked an incision into the world's chest, right above her ribs. They sunk their fingers into it- invading her- and they stretched her out, pulling the skin like seams, every knot popping apart until she's laid out like a work of art, ready to be hung in a cavernous museum filled with works of art telling the same dreadful tale. The same dreadful tale that only humans could allow to write.

 

The people there, bustling with their plastic lives, (empty enough for her) are the ones who photograph the art, fading colors into dull lines. Those lines will never nearly be as pronounced as the oily streams she bathed in, not because she volunteered but because her ponds were filled with disease.

 

They wore away her name in their sands, storms crashing onto her beach with every new labyrinth they trapped her in, tendrils sweeping the land.

 

Houses upon houses.

 

Cookie-cutter.

 

No individual.

 

No lives to be lived.

 

She's overthrown by parasites, viruses that depend on her conscious mind.

 

Straining.

 

Awake.

 

Anesthetic.

 

Under laughing gas forever and forever more.

 

_Welcome to your new Manifest Destiny._

 

Their hearts were smeared with oil and soot.

 

They say when people die, they see their lives flash before their eyes, but instead that is life itself, you're not filled with regret, you're filled with the pride of all the beauty you could capture in one instance that was the shortness of your life, no matter how undeniably old they were. One breath stopped, but not before taking her husband's breath away like when he first saw her. There is no pride in all the beauty of the lives they lead. 

 

The husband hung himself not three weeks later, but he was already dead.

 

///

 

Let's put something into perspective.

 

It is 1923 and a young woman folds her hands under her chin, sunken lullabies pooling around her tongue as a beat vibrating from her feet padded onto crackling floorboards.

 

Smoke clouds surrounded her as if they were gentle feathers dusting her face, her wrinkled, winkled face, the wrinkled face ten years older than she wanted, and thirty too young than the universe did. The house fire took onto her skin and ripped it off, but it wasn't as torturous as watching burning ash sink miserably into her son. She sang for that's all she could do, the smoke coating her grey hairs as the licking fire captured his feet.

 

She has watched her world fold into itself, raging with a volatile might strong enough to break anything, everything she had wanted, and now it was persistent on finishing the job.

 

She remembers the day in the platinum room, when she held her stomach in protest, marching a parade against her broken body behind shackles so thick, she could cut away diamonds with a lash of her wrists.

 

She remembers when she told her husband the news and never saw him again, a spit on her feet and nothing else.

 

Then came the golden age, when her knees buckled to stone stairs and a child fell onto her shoulders, mended her, tore her through troubles, and fixed her. Piece after piece. Bolt after bolt. Screw after screw. The orphaned child fixed her until her bones no longer ached with each step she took, no creaking of rust beneath her tear-soaked acidic shackles.

 

Now she would have to watch the bastard child crucified in front of her.

 

She sang a quiet lullaby, knowing quite well he would not make it out of the house fire. (Source unknown. Damage done.)

 

All the while, he screamed for her, debris falling to his lap, searing the skin already peeling off. She stayed still, hand falling to her infertile stomach as water grazed from her eyes and into the flames engulfing her house. Bolt after bolt. Screw after screw.. The terrible lurching of her stomach poured through at last in a terrible scream when the child lost his voice and died as the flames engulfed him. The woman made it out alive, her hands seared, but heart beating. 

 

She choked on bleach in a bathtub not five days later, but she was already dead.

 

///

_(The funny thing about dead people is that you do not know they're there until they're not.)_

 

///

 

Let's put something into perspective.

 

Bullets can be dug out of wounds like eyes out of the sockets with intuition.

 

The first time Dave and John met, they had literally bumped heads, leaving their glasses astray on the classroom floor. They were both in seventh grade and they had both forgotten to do their homework, John out of genuine oblivion, Dave out of the feeling that raked through him when he approached his own home.

 

"You have red eyes."

 

"And you have blue eyes." And that was that. They hung at the hip, understanding more about each other than they did themselves in two year's time.

 

Dave knew John was the flames that could engulf the house when left unattended, a bottled rage simmering deep within his blue eyes. Why can't everybody live! Why is everybody still debating on whether or not people have the right to food! Why must the people who live so far away need a hug the most!

 

John's mind could not be hardened to understand the world, infected too easily by the cries of dead people walking (the funny thing about dea-).

 

John knew Dave as the water that crashed upon his own shores. His home, the life he lead, everything about Dave tore himself down piece by piece because even if someone could respect the beach, his demise would be himself.

 

For Dave's mind had been hardened to understand the world before Dave knew the world was round. They had said that his disorder developed as a mechanism to cope with the fear of home, but then spread when he had something to care about, starting at the age of thirteen. 

 

John also understood that Dave needed structure, conditions that would mold the instruments used but always play the same song, in a sense.

 

When they first moved in together, they had gotten into a violent fight five months later. Dave said he couldn't stand John's reckless nature, his ability to leave clutter astray at every corner of the small apartment but never in the right place. John didn't bother to tidy up the flames that buzzed in Dave's head, because it was so senseless.

 

The urge to clean every corner John touched purged at his mind every time John walked into the room, but Dave stayed silent and ever tense. Dave's will prodded like thousands of televisions running the same film at different speeds, at different channels, at different chapters, seemingly blasting their bothersome murmurs even though he turned all of them off.

 

_(Clean thee fucking room clean the ffucking room clean the fucking ro-)_

 

_(Tic toc tic tocc tic toc tic toc ttic toc ti-)_

 

_(Turn off the lights onee two three fourr five turn off the goddamn lights one two thre-)_

 

_(If youu dont step on that damn line every fucking time you enter the apartmment the people you love are going to--)_

 

Not constantly, it depended on the variables, but when it did occur, it shuddered through Dave's entire body. 

 

It started when he was younger, during school. The teacher would sort out piles of M&M's to the children to demonstrate multiplication. Dave found that every time he would eat a row, he would have to eat the vertical or horizontal counterpart, a feeling of divine stirring at his gut settling at the thought of the consequences. 

 

He walked home one day from detention for not doing his homework. Something wasn't where it belonged in the clutter. He quickly searched through the empty bottles and cords to find the alarm clock and set it where it belonged. 

 

Right where it belonged. 

 

Now it was scratching and twitching, all controlling his movements in unlike circumstances. Every time he was his apartment, he wanted to surrender himself to the guillotine just so the urges breaking under his skin would dissipate. Yet without the constant pricking, he felt a pit of dread folding into his spine, so painful, so strong. Maddening tension built his foundation until Dave couldn't withstand the voices.

 

Both boys made a pact that when John would leave a mess, Dave would point it out, and John would have to clean it up, the only room not applied was John's bedroom, the one place in the world Dave couldn't stand going in.

 

 _When they first moved in together_ , they had lost savings quickly and John tried to sell what he had no use for anymore; old DS games, shitty broken cameras, posters. Dave punched John in the eye and set them back where he knew them to be, biting his knuckles shortly afterward, silently dreading every consistent thought that came to mind and his own ability to stop them.

 

_(Thisisyourfuckingfaultyoupeiceofshityourfuckingfaultyourfuckingfaultyourfuckin-)_

"This isn't your fault, Dave." John sat next to Dave on his bed, careful not to knock any of the many items horded around them on the floor, "We don't have to sell them, I can just ask my father for help and pay him back later, okay?"  _  
_

 

_(No.)_

 

"Fine." Dave muttered, leaning back onto the pillows with the backs of his wrists over his forehead.

 

///

 

On particularly bad days, where Dave raked his nails to pastel crimson pillars up his body just to try and forget that there were diseases living on him for just a moment, _(a moment! Is that too much to ask?)_ John would take him somewhere and force him to focus on something, anything else.

 

This became ritual simply because Dave said so.

 

Soon enough, as it was with everything in Dave's life, it grew into something evil and consuming, now he needed it or else the world would collide with the sun and everything would burn. Frowning, John would take him anyway, after all, Dave wouldn't have to lock himself in a room for hours to avoid watching John do the dishes if all the televisions in his mind become background noise.

 

And so they went. Clouds swept over John's head, a halo cascading over pink cheeks tinted, against the fresh air, pressing against them on a winter's evening. They walked through the stagnant air, fluffed with white snow drifting silently as if they scared to wake up the sleeping winter. The ground crunched peacefully with every passing visitor. Shimmering lights, a Christmas light show for the start of December, danced and glimmered in the trees.

 

It seemed to Dave as if John's smile couldn't get any wider. Desperate hands clawed onto a mutual cup of cocoa, half the actual cocoa, half tiny dehydrated marshmallows. Steam stung to their frosty fingertips from the cup, making their pulses beat pleasantly soft. They hunched over, muscles tense, but dressed for the occasion. John's goofy, one-dollar Santa hat stood out against their black winter coats.

 

Darkness shrouded the landscape, decorative lights being the only path guiding them through the Christmas light show aside from glittery stars. Pristine cuts of dazzling light bulbs coated the treeline of the city, solemn blinking filling the usually-hopeless night with a dazzling spectrum of color.   

 

"I'd hate to see the electric bill," Dave noted, tingling features curving into a graceful smile. John struck the back of his head abruptly, softened snickering following. Soft bursts of air showed in the air from John's chapped lips.

 

The light show celebrated every year, bringing a needed joy to the frosted city, glazed over with worry and doubt through the year. They seemed like the two who needed it most, on the edge of irate silent treatment through stress of schooling, stress of bills, stress of living.

 

The pounding in Dave's head almost ceased with the wispy songs drifting over the festival, tunes that lift spirits from their beds. The same songs that brought people to their windowsill to look at the clear night stars. John threaded his fingers onto the other's, sharing any gloved warmth he could as they both ventured through the strung lights. Somewhere else, the faint chatter of others echoed through the park. 

 

Dave's eyes glanced over at the pale features of his friend and the breathless, content way his lips parted when he looked around the park. Of course it was in a park. Where else could you find the tranquil aura perfect of the light show? John's glasses shimmered off the silent clicking of the astonishing lights.

 

Dave's mouth opened to speak, his heart beginning to race as he turned to John.

 

"Thank you. I-" He whispered, just to be met with a spitting pain, throbbing, sinking down into his eyes and spiraling down his spine.

 

He choked down on his words, biting on his cheek as he curled into himself, clenching his eyes shut. Dave shook his head to the side with a hope that soon the pain would fade away. But the spontaneous attack did not end, but instead grew to the size of the devil. Dave's throat produced a sudden shout. 

 

Then came the gagging in his throat, gripping hold of his tongue as he sputtered to grab hair, holding his breath over the thumping in his chest and the ringing vibrating through his skull. His entire body numbed like being thrown into some invisible ocean, sweeping him from his feet.

 

Dave knelt to the concrete pathway. His eyes still tightened together out of pain, his hands grasped onto the side of his skull, tangling into the locks. The Devil's fingers pulled behind him as the demon sunk deeper and deeper- prodding through his lips, filling his lungs, salt sting and shark nipping gashes everywhere they could.

 

He was stuck in a glass box, naked, chilled like a science experiment, a dissected, tested on. All that pain rushed back to him, his head spinning with bile rising in his throat.

 

Dave cried out, barking out curses as the sharp stabbing continued, like dragging a knife up a corpse, or tauntingly pressing a match to raw skin. John hesitated, hands grasping onto Dave.

 

The cries calling for help coming from John then filled the air no longer with the calming gentle breeze but rather with the bitter bite of winter. Dave knocked his shades from his nose, rubbing under his lashes until his fingers refused to move anymore, stomach turning with every spout of cold sweat washing from his body while John tried desperately to call out to him, only a drone in Dave's ears.

 

///

 

_("911 what's your emergency?")_

 

///

 

Midnight.

 

The white light buzzing above twitched down Dave's back, curling a sense of death into his ribs,  consuming his nerves and fingertips as he fiddled with the link inside his pocket. The doctor's voice was present, but Dave wasn't listening, forbidden thoughts sinking through a delicate skull without restraint.

 

He didn't need a fancy explanation to understand the message. His chest thudded as he restrained from shoving blunt nails into his skin. He had been here for too long to know that it was just temporary. Just temporary. Just temporary...

 

With exhausted eyes closed, Dave pulled a phrase through the doctor's speech; 

 

"You have an unidentified disease of the eye. You may or may not go completely blind."

 

That trickled down his throat and ceased his words as he nodded, ominous words echoing in his mind. _Now you really was diseased_ , he shook, _and you can't protect himself from other diseases anymore. You should wash his hands more._

 

In any other occasion, Dave would have laughed and brushed it off like another one of John's games, but he believed the doctor only for one reason; when he opened his eyes, pale lashes finally reaching a dead hue, it seemed like a cracked screen, bold blank lines blocking a perimeter of his vision, its margins sinking into the center. He closed his eyes once more as if he woke up to a nightmare. He wasn't ready to ravish the world into his thoughts, dread consuming, shadows weeping. For its the simple things like that to create a monster from the coward he painted himself to be. 

 

His brother would tell him to roll with the punches, deal with what life serves you, but those words were meaningless if Dave's life had poisoned him with "what it served." 

 

"The effects of the anesthetic should wear out soon. It is highly recommended you come in next week for an experimental surgery-- Ah, you do have insurance don't you?" Not like he could afford it anyway. He had trouble throwing away left over food, better yet, money! Dave nodded anyway, corners of his mouth tipping downward, "Good, the ladies at the counter will ask you for details at your departure. Over the counter pain medicine should handle the pain pretty well, if anything else happens, urgent care unit, understood?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"Do you have any questions?"

 

"No."

 

And that was that. The doctor patted him on the back with a curt, shallow 'Good luck' and a smile plastered into thin lines. Dave knew that somehow his mind could turn that smile, although genuine, into something else. Even now, he saw it as a sign of disgust in the doctor.

 

A nausea settled in his stomach, bats swarming in his gut as he managed out to the lobby.

 

"What did the doctor say?" John's frantic voice rushed next to Dave as he handed Dave his winter coat, eyes starving for some form of hope. Dave trekked forward, glancing everywhere but to the other.

 

"I'm fine," He brushed past John, whining to the frost stinging his skin in the air, "It's no big deal."

 

"You are certainly _not_ fine," John's cheeks spat an impatient poison, "You were in there for _two hours,_ numbskull _._ "

 

"Listen, if I say I'm fine, that's you cue to stop prodding and get back to your usual stupid-- dumb, moronic--  _f_ - _fucking idiotic_ squabble, okay??" Dave managed a hand to John's shoulder, lies spouting from his fingertips like teeth sinking into a demon's pound of flesh. He was too tired and too scared to do anything but retort with anger.

 

"Dave," John's voice warned but Dave could not muster words, "If you go home and hurt yourself over how completely _fine_ you are, I swear t-"

 

"Shut up, John," _We_ _freed that bloody bullet, remember?_

 

"Happy Birthday, then."

 

///

 

Dave had a way of expression that John did not understand, words and phrases that could reach into the heavens and pull out a chunk of the sky and gift the euphoria to the conscious body. His hands plucked apart the clouds and painted pots with them. His mind sculpted with rapid fingers shaping charcoal features on beautiful creatures. 

 

 _Dave_ , John thought fondly, _has a way with art_. That's what he's studying in school, anyway, four years of footsteps trailing behind him. He was too goddamn good at it too... a master of his craft. Dave used to win every art-based competition in high school and John was always there to celebrate afterward. Dave wouldn't just give up the seeds to another when he worked so hard to harvest them, right? 

 

John sat comfortably on their shared couch in their apartment. He curled his toes under his body, slumping back just as he waited to start an old movie in their old VCR, just like Dave and John did every Friday when they weren't at each other's necks.

 

Just as expected, footsteps behind him followed the blaring of the movie advertisements. Just that sound was enough for John to excitedly glance over his shoulder to Dave, with the eyes of an innocence of a person watching the stars for the first time, and slowly faded away to disappointment as Dave avoided the screen, face robotic and colorless.

 

"I don't think I'm going to go to classes anymore, don't bother waking me up early tomorrow," Dave yawned through his words, waving John off, and rubbing calloused hands over his forehead as he padded down the hallway sleepily. Dave clicked off the lights _(one, two, three, four, five)_  whileJohn's eyebrows furrowed, focused on his bowl of popcorn instead of the dark hallway.

 

"Dude, what do you mean you 'aren't going to classes anymore?" John spoke once the words soaked in. He whipped his head around once more to search for Dave's silhouette, instead setting the bowl of popcorn aside to follow Dave's footsteps down the hallway.

 

Earlier that day, Dave found himself with an empty sketchbook and webbed blackness stretching from the lines after his birthday. It had grown worse and he knew what that meant. It would still keep stretching over his boundaries and no matter how much he twitched and panicked, alarms ringing, TV's blaring, he could not do anything about that. He sucked in a breath and gathered his materials to head out of class early. No one said a word.

 

"Use your context clues, bro!" Dave's voice called through thin walls, taunting John when he tapped crooked knuckles on the blonde's bedroom door.

 

"I know what you meant, but you're already half way through your education! Half way through your education," John paused, almost expecting a response other than a nonchalant grunt, "The education you worked hard to get. The education that is paid for by the state going to get you places that isn't behind a cash register at McDonald's."

 

"I'm trying to become manager, lay off and let me follow me dreams, damm-"

 

"You love art, why would you want to quit now!" John's voice spiked mid-sentence but he lowered it to a whisper. No response, "Dave?" He bit his lip, "Dave..?" Nothing. He groaned out of frustration, taking in a breath to reply to the stunned silence, merely huffing it out, "Do you even want to watch the movie with me? It's the Iron Giant, a classic that really pulled through with it's ending. I mean... woah," John forced his voice into a pout, "We've been waiting since Summer to begin feasting that crap, man!"

 

"Nope."

 

And that was that. John settled back on the couch, alone, and pitifully cold with the thought crisp air of night picking away at his nerves.

 

///

 

The next morning the air was stagnant to John, choking down heavy footsteps because Dave still hadn't woken up yet.

 

At noon, he crossed his arms and stood in the doorway of Dave's bedroom, mouth twitching with contemptuous thoughts. Dave was not awake yet, despite having gone to bed longer than twelve hours ago, so John's mind branched off into two conclusions; one, Dave is asleep STILL or two, Dave was pretending to sleep to avoid John for some reason.

 

Respectively drowning his angry air with joy, greedy tricks he could pull on Dave, John tiptoed through the doorway, hands splayed out on either side of himself as he concentrated on bare spots of the carpet. 

 

Dave made idle sounds, but didn't seem to notice John. A grin splayed out on John's face. He lunged forward to attack Dave's peaceful slumber with a sudden shake of the shoulders, "Boo!" He snickered as Dave's body abruptly jerked to life.

 

"Fuck!" Dave labored, clenching his eyes shut and grasping blindly for his glasses, but they clacked to the floor.

 

John scoffed and shook his head, yielding himself for a pillow, an empty bottle of juice, or a rotting corpse- jar to the face.

 

It didn't come.

 

He lowered his hands, eyes furrowing in confusion, sputtering as he saw Dave's anxious look, fingers entangled into his hair and knees curling slowly into the chest. 

 

"Are you ok-"

 

"Don't _fucking_ do that again," Dave spat, words frayed of variety except for that of pure terror, littering chopped pauses between words. Dave laughed, swallowing down a breath as he rubbed dark spots beneath his eyes, hair astray, rumpled. John didn't take the time to notice that his chapped hands looked on the verge of bleeding, "And get _the hell_ out out of my room."

 

The infected wound tore in on itself to chip bone equally, decaying knobby fingers without notice.

 

///

 

_(Dave tried to get that image about murdering John out of his head but it played like an empty record in a room full of thousands of TV's.)_

 

///

 

 _Dave_ , John thought bitterly, _is a blind fool._

 

It was the little things that made John tic. For example, hypocrisy slipping through the cracks where Dave would accidentally leave things astray, or not make his bed all the way, but notice when John would misplace something. 

 

Or when he would act frantic in light rooms, sweat beading on his forehead.

 

After turning off the lights immediately, his face would pale out and his body would go cold.  John put a hand to each side of his cheeks and check his temperature and Dave would brush him off, ridiculing his quote unquote "mother bird act" and said he's "going to bed".

 

Or when the heir would walk into Dave vomiting his guts out. ("B-because the fucking pain medicine wouldn't work...") John would sit behind the boy and help him out of his blazing clothes as he dry heaved, goosebumps on his skin.

 

Or when Dave seemed in his head too often, as of now. 

 

John sat next to him, chest slumped onto the lumpy couch. The knight slung his feet over the back of the couch while John sat like a "normal person, thanks." Dave's fingers slid over something in his pocket, going rigid.

 

"Clean this coin for me." _(It's abnormaal, it's innfected, if it stays in here any longer it's going to spread against my whole bodyy an-)_ He blinked his eyes open, holding the shingle to John.

 

"You have two hands, do it yourself." John merely grunted, focused on the television.

 

"I can't. Just clean the penny." His voice strained against an anxious expression. He tore one John's hands from beside him and pressed the coin into his palm, chest falling. With all of his will, he wished he could clean the penny, but his sight had been getting worse, spider webs connecting dots burning into vision. It would be impossible to tell which stream of water was warm or cold. It would be impossible to tell if it had diseases crawling about like maggots.

 

"Eh? I'll do it la-"

 

"No!" _You sound pathetic,_ Dave, the blonde's head pounded, _obsessing over a fucking coin, no wonder John hates you and won't let you help him like this._ He bared his teeth, scowling with infected bullet wounds left untended, "Just clean the damn coin, okay?"

 

"In a minute."

 

Not like Dave could argue with that. The promise of release was enough for him. He swallowed a shaky breath and sunk further into himself,

 

"It looks completely fine, but okay. After the movie." John stuck the coin in the folds of his thick red and green sweater, horribly crafted, with loose ends and buttons in the most spontaneous places. It was odd for Dave to not call John out on it.

 

"Christmas was last week, you fucking tool," Dave would say, smacking the side of John's head.

 

"Christmas is in LESS THAN A YEAR, you can't blame me for being excited." John would reply, slugging his shoulder and Dave would probably stick a spit covered finger into John's ear.  

 

But that didn't happen.  

 

"Dude, there's something wrong with you," John finally spoke after a long, drawn out silence, shoving Dave's shoulder, "Ever since the The Incident, capital t, capital i, it's like you've, I don't know, you've been possessed or something," He could feel Dave rolling his eyes at that.

 

"If I'm possessed you're a sugar plum fairy-"

 

"Shush! No! Ugh, how do I explain this..." He clicked his tongue, hallowing his cheeks, "You've been getting really sick! And odd near light. And sleeping in for hours more than your supposed to and staying up until the wee hours of the morning afterward. And you're twitchy! Not normal twitchy, either, you've been leaving things around and tripping over things and you don't go to class anymore!" The heir rambled on, holding a tight rein on his voice. "What the hell is going on with you!"  He huffed out, crossing his arms over his chest.

 

Dave just laughed, stale, and short lived.

 

"That's the part where you say 'I know what you are' and I say 'say it.'" He shook his head, "I'm fine," The blonde choked on his words, avoiding how the thought donned John's face in watercolor bloomed to the sunset.

 

"This is about what the doctor said, isn't it?" Considerably, John's voice softened. However, Dave's grimace only grew. 

 

"Please, on a scale from skinny dipping with wrinkly old registered sex offenders in the dead of night to sniffing Nicki Minaj's tidy whities, I'm the opportunity to become the swimsuit fitter for a Miss America pageant, giving their boobies gentle sprits of water," He tipped from his odd position, legs falling in John's lap, "I'm. _Fine._ "

 

"Dave!" John pushed the legs off his lap, huffing once more, "For fuck's sake, tell me what's wrong!" He was already scooting ever closer to Dave, but the blonde was already groaning with his joints as he stood up, reaching his shoulders backward in an uncomfortable stretch.

 

"It's not your problem," The blonde was already walking to his room with his words. John followed suit, pinching onto the fabric of Dave's shirt to gain attention, but he slipped through the cracks.

 

"Not my problem," Scoff,  "Are you kidding me?!" And in that moment, John grabbed Dave's shoulders, shaking the other to face him, "You're my problem, you moron!" John, with eyebrows furrowed, "And I cannot stand another minute of watching you pretend everything is so _good fine and dandy_. Now if you value your life, spill the beans," An uneasy feeling washed from his head as he found the peculiar way Dave crooked his head, his jaw clenched as he held words by the neck. leaving them to rot as John inspected everything about him that was off.

 

"Just something dumb, man."

 

" _You're_ not the judge of that," John trembled, stepping backward in determination. Dave's gaze did not follow him. John's lip curled in distaste.

 

"I've grown used to it, I swear." But Dave's voice did not falter- he was still addressing John despite John being physically angry. John growled a hum, demons secreting from both of them.

 

"That doesn't make it any more right!" This time, John hissed, curling his fists into balls just as Dave flinched to John's bark like it was the bite. Suddenly all the pieces clicked together like rapid gunfire, "Can-" The phrased boiled in John's mind, "Can you see me?" The sharp note played through them, softening features and dissolving the unwanted poltergeists at their feet.

 

"No," Dave stated, clearly suppressed. It pierced ten bullets through John's chest.

 

"Does it hurt?"

 

"Yeah," Ten more followed.

 

"Is there anything I can do?"

 

"No," John's chest ripped open by the seams and cracked with every gunshot echoing.

 

"Are you going to be okay..?"

 

"I don't know," His chest was bloodied and gashed through as he gulped down his breaths and Dave didn't know if he could tear the bullets out if they sunk through the spine.

 

Dave turned around and walked down the hallway and into his room. 

 

///

 

Sometimes, certain thoughts can trap you and rip apart your bones on a platter.

 

For example, going to a hospital every Friday to lighten a cancer kid's life because you both know that child is going to die in that bed. For example, a terrified child screaming for his brothers and sisters because his father decided to go to bar that night and now he doesn't recognize his own children.  For example, a married woman burning at the stake in Russia while her wife is forced to watch.

 

For example, knowing when somebody has an attachment to another, over a long period and a life lost, they die together, whether physical or no. Through family, marriage, or a mother to her son, they will never have to suffer their severed fingers once more.

 

A funny thing, dead people are, because when people have formed an unbreakable link, they can feel the other one slowly decaying through gunshots with time.

 

The night bellowed it's soft melodies and city symphonies through the night, but not the one Dave was used to.

 

It drove him mad that life could go on like that, but Dave's whole life was anything but horrid.

 

The lock on his door was too worn to lock it, so he pressed a chair to the knob instead and prayed that would do the trick as he sat on his bed, breath heightening.  His stomach ached and his head dripped with what felt like heavy and light in different areas and he didn't know how to stand all the sudden.

 

His thoughts flicked to the medicine on his nightstand, right next to his shades, but an illness struck him and he held tightly onto himself, baring his teeth for the effects he had known too well. The shudder of pain that took over his body in a cold sweat. 

 

The secret he tried to keep to himself was too obvious, and that made it all the more worse. His rotting body spread out from a gunshot now stained his clothes and he was terrified- no- petrified, of disapproval.

 

 _But John is already disappointed,_ his mind chimed, _remember?_ Dave quit school, shut John out, left them both clawing for money because he was. He was. A disappointment. He bit onto his finger's knuckle, folding his legs beneath him. Little by little, he has watched his vision dissolve before his eyes, leaving his devices dependent on flecks of odd colors in odd places as the only scrap surviving. He was no fool. That would be gone in time.

 

A knocking on the blonde's door raked him from his thoughts. The doorknob jiggled and the chair fell backward. 

 

"Hey, uh. I cleaned that penny for you," A voice muttered, frail enough for both of them to understand it was for Dave's own good, "...Can I come in?"

 

"Yeah," Dave whispered back, focusing his attention to his lap, "Don't do anything you might regret."

 

"That's my goal," The other laughed, door creaking open, "Don't say anything to make me act rashly."

 

"That's my goal," Dave mimed and closed his eyes to the sinking of the mattress before him, holding out his hand, and suppressing the anxious shakes his skin screamed. Obediently, John plopped the coin right into Dave's palm, "You're a saint."

 

"Well, I do my best," John boasted, shuffling to cross his legs much like Dave, "Did you take any of your pills?"

 

"As if I could read the labels," Dave snorted, thumping John's forehead, "Be a _dolwface_ and get your _sugahpops_ some of his _goods,_ " This time, with his silly words, neither one of the two could contain the faint grins ghosting onto their cheeks, 

 

"Some of the things you say do not phase me anymore. In one ear, out the other," John groaned as he reached over to the bedside table, popping open each and counting out the doses, "Do any of these help with the uh. The thing," The brunette continued casually, accompanying an abused carton of apple juice to the medicine. Dave popped the assortment into his mouth and washed them down quickly.

 

"Nah. I'm a special snowflake."

 

"Doc's words?"

 

"Marvelously. I'm a lost cause. They ain't got _shit._ "

 

"Oh, how reassuring. You know just the right things to say," John's voice trailed off and he cleared his throat instead, "You are, uh, completely blind?"

 

"A-Almost. I can see bits and pieces but everything else is just, you know. Not there."

 

"Has it always been like... that? Since the time at the light festival?" 

 

"No, no, it was better back then, it was just... it was just...." Dave's voice reached the point of broken, "Oh god," He responded on an instant, frantic, although whispered, hushed under his breath. 

 

"What? What is it?"

 

"I-I--"

 

"I'll kick you."   
  
  


"I should have known., I-" 

 

"Please tell me."

 

"You wouldn't-" 

 

"Test me," John's eyes were fierce, and locked with Dave's. The blonde let out a shaky breath, pulling the courage to speak through calm words again, averting his eyes towards the window.  

 

"I'm going to wake up one morning and not be able to see anything again," His voice cracked as he rubbed his chin, closing his fingers over his mouth with an acidic, strained, "I don't know if I know how to deal with that," He stilled his mouth to shut, pulsed hiccups tugging at his neck. 

 

John's eyes immediately stung with the thought, immediate dread accumulating at the mere thought. 

 

"Am I supposed to prepare myself? Take it as a great sign from above that being an artist is bullshit? Ah yes, the hills of my life finally fucking unfolding, as if I hadn't had the goddamn Himalayas through my days."

 

"That's not right," 

 

"Everybody says that trial makes you a better person, so I guess suicidal is the height of human purity," John guessed that Dave's eyes were starting to subconsciously tear up as well because he sniffed and rubbed his eyes with the hems of his shirt.   

 

"No, that's not true! This is fucking cruel, and- and!"

 

"And what? What?? You're going to wave your magic pixie wand and try to convince me that this is for my own good and that I didn't do anything to deserve this? Aha. Ha ha ha. Fat chance."

 

"No!" John's voice was viciously strong, but this time Dave has an edge that fought against him, _"No..."_ His words radiated aggression, "We could get something done! Did the doctor say anything? Maybe-"

 

"Maybe what. John." 

 

"Maybe you could stop sitting there doing nothing and try and figure your shit out!" 

 

_"How."_

 

"Maybe-"

 

"Stop," Dave shook his head, sucking in a breath with each word he wished to share.  His chest sunk down finally and he hunched over, rubbing his forehead with both of his hands.

 

A weight settled over them then. A weight of how terrible they were acting to eachother. 

 

"I'm sorry," John shook his head sympathetically, "I wish I knew how to fix all of this." Dave merely scoffed in response, "I-" John urged forward albeit with nothing to hold.

 

One glimpse at Dave's face told that the weight settling over his shoulders was so, so much heavier than that on John's, like he was trudging up a mountain with all the dirt and soil he's ever walked upon in a bag slung over his back.

 

"Look at me," John demanded softly but Dave did nothing. Grabbing his shoulders, he rocked Dave slightly, "Look at me. Look at _me,"_   He whispered once more. Slowly but surely, Dave's attention tracked to John's face, "There you go," He murmured. It's an odd sight, to watch someone look without really... looking. Unfocused, glazed over. John whimpered out a pained whine, leaning in to wrap his arms around Dave's frame. At first, Dave tensed sharply, "Hope that wasn't too sudden," but the heir apologized into Dave's shoulder, "You looked like you needed it." 

 

And that was that. 

 

"I don't know what I'm going to do," Dave shivered, gulping down the pleasure of letting those words out finally.

 

"That's okay, we'll know eventually."

 

"I don't know what _you_ are going to do."

 

"I'm going to try my best to help you," John chuckled, flicking Dave's ear, "Friggin dummy,"

 

"I'm not a charity case."

 

"You're my best friend, same thing." John frayed, gripping Dave just a little tighter.

 

"It's not that, I'm. I'm not a little kid, man, you don't have to waste your time on me."

 

"Some people are worth time, "John continued, "So shut up," and so Dave did.

 

Moments passed with just their heartbeats thrumming between them, pulsing beyond the blaring TV's.

 

Different thoughts emblazoned themselves instead, ones where John's eyes bruised over with worry and Dave's skin scabbed over with every fingertip he ran down his rib cage because he couldn't satisfy the thoughts they just kept coming and his pennies werealways infectednow and he couldn'ttellifJohn was selling his things andnightmareswouldconsumehimand-

 

"I really didn't want any of this to happen," Dave croaked out, biting his cheek enough to taste metal. John slowly blinked away from him, light fingertips pressing onto Dave's.

 

"I didn't either, but-"

 

"I didn't want me to be made with such a shitty brain that's always screaming these things at me," He clenched his hands into John's, "and I didn't want you to be so ridiculously okay with it,"

 

As Dave continued, he grew pressured, shaking with the pain enveloping his body, "and I don't want to keep all these things anymore and I don't want to be able to not watch movies anymore-"

 

"Dave please,"

 

"And I don't want to think these ridiculous things and I do," 

 

"Dave..."

 

"-and I didn't want to go blind and and-"

 

"Dave,"

 

"And I don't want to wake up one morning and not be able to see anything again," He didn't realize there were crystal shards dripping off his chin until John reached out with the hems of his shirt to dry them away.

 

"Then you better make the last thing you see something worth it's title, huh?" John hummed out a beat breath, pressing his hands to each side of Dave's face, thumbs brushing away stray tears, frantic eyelids closing, "I'm going to try and help you, okay?" Dave nodded into John's palms, "I'm not going to not love you because I've tried for too damn long to grow used to you. I swear to god, you're the prickiest prick to ever prick. Your a cross bred cactus porcupine," A warm, quaint smile painted his face as he punched Dave's shoulder, "Your eyes are red," A dopey phrase floated over to Dave. 

 

And there went the buzzing in Dave's mind completely. He remembered John's stupid card tricks when he was thirteen, "way to old to even be doing magic tricks", while Dave was caged by his demons, and that shoved his heads into the clouds. For once, Dave could finally see the sun. John's effect had not faded with time.  He pressed into Dave with fragility, honesty, and a will to comfort him, knowledge that stirred in Dave's stomach. Dave couldn't force out a curt, 'thank you' before he came crashing into John again in a tight hug.

 

///

 

Let's put something into perspective.

 

It is January and a boy had woken up. He blinked. Light hissed once and then dissipated. He couldn't see anything ever again, but at least his best friend pulled him away from his secrets before he could weep alone, crawling with the dead bit by bit before he would take his own life.

 

~~_(H-e was al-r-ready deadd)_ ~~

 

Instead, the last image he would ever see burned into his mind; a festival of lights, strong enough to leak through the hazy cracks only he could experience, and pink cheeks upon electric eyes that bother, prod, and try to understand.

 

He carved the memory of sight into his mind with hesitant fingers clasping around his middle from behind him with each of his dreadful tears.

 

Steadfast waiting for the buzzing to end- patiently searching for bloody bullets.

 

///

 


End file.
